What happens when you turn on all of Microsoft’s features for Dynamics 365 for Sales

Spoiler alert: If you’re turning on features that even Microsoft hasn’t fully vetted your computer will not explode; but, if you were looking for an excuse to pour your coffee onto your machine and call it a day, you’ll find one. The good news is, it is completely worth it.

Keep reading.

At Vox ISM, on March 4 2019, we will be fully live on Dynamics 365 for Sales, Service, and Project Service. We will also be live in the Cloud on Business Central and Power BI. We’re making the migration from CRM 2015 on-premise and NAV 2015 on premise. Being the eager person that I am, in January when this project started, I insisted we turn on every feature and tool available for these apps. What was I thinking? I have just shy of 3 months to turn on everything and I can be quoted as saying, “we have to, it’s awesome!” 40 users, a full suite of products, 4 departments going live, all happening on March 4. We enabled:

• LinkedIn Account and Contact integration
• LinkedIn Campaigns integration
• Business Central two-way integration with Sales
• BC and Sales Order integration
• BC and Sales Product integration
• BC and Sales Account integration
• Power BI integration in both systems (ERP and CRM)
• Organization Insights
• Dynamics 365 App for Outlook
• Relationship Assistant (AI)
• Email engagement (AI)
• Hubs <- and according to Microsoft we’re the 1^st ones to do so.
• Mobile device deployment
• OneDrive integration
• OneNote integration
• SharePoint integration
• Microsoft Teams
• We moved the entire company to Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange Online.
• Portals

And probably a few others that are eluding me right now.

So what happens when you turn on all of Microsoft’s features for Dynamics 365 for Sales? Several 16 hour days and 100s of cups of coffee later (here’s the twist) you get the most powerful sales tool you could ever imagine. I may have lost a bit more hair implementing this system for arguably my toughest customer, my own company, but the productivity tools we implemented are outstanding. Today I edited a quote sent to me by a rep directly from Outlook, converted it to pdf and sent it back without leaving the reply window of the email message. That’s right, I didn’t have to download it, open it, make my adjustments, save to a folder, then reply and launch the file explorer and attach the new file with the new filename, then upload it to my cloud storage to meet the company’s SOP requirements. I was able to edit it right in the reply window and it auto-saved and attached the file with my initials in the file name for revision control. I hit track and everything was taken care of.

The features our sales reps now have:

• 20,000+ LinkedIn connections in CRM now and when the April ’19 release comes they’ll even have live updated org. charts.
• More leads! Our sponsored content and website registrations automatically create sales leads for my reps to follow up on.
• Live accounting data for reference; outstanding orders, sales for the year, credit balance, etc. all available on every account screen in Dynamic 365 for Sales. No additional licensing required.
• Create quotes and orders in CRM that go straight to accounting when deals are closed.
• Power BI and CRM reports side by side on the sales dashboards. Providing my team with the ability to dissect and analyze then take direct actions on their sales activities.
• Everything on this list can be accessed directly from your Outlook (on your desktop, browser, tablet, and mobile)
• An AI-powered personal assistant that provides notifications for information requests, meeting invites, upcoming deadlines, customer sentiment and priority emails that may affect open deals, and more.
• Fully automated processes that with the click of one button can generate a polished quote addressed to the customer on file, pdf’d, send it to the customer with a thank you note, an automatically scheduled follow up activity and an update to your pipeline to reflect the correct sales stage of your deal.

Again and more….

What’s the takeaway?

Let someone else go through the growing pains, and then benefit from their hard work. In this case, we did the hard part and now we’re ready to roll out the system to all of our customers. If you have any questions about my implementation experience with this project or want to know more about Microsoft’s Sales productivity tools, send me your message and I will answer all of your detailed questions. My contact details are on our company page.

Digital Marketing for Manufacturers in 2019 is going to be more important than ever. Lead generation is occurring more and more in the online space, and if manufacturers don’t invest in a digital plan now, it could mean paying massive amounts for it later. Did you know that by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials who conduct most, if not all, of their business online? There’s no more time to ignore this fact. It is evident that we are in the digital age and rely on the Internet to solve all of our problems. Companies that make these solutions clearer and choices easier for us are typically the ones that win our business.

So manufacturers, have we convinced you yet? Here are three more reasons why it is imperative that manufacturers implement a digital marketing plan.

75% of people judge the credibility of a company based on the design of its website alone

You don’t want to be missing out on easy-to-get leads just because your website isn’t mobile-friendly or your design isn’t pleasing to the eye.

94% of B2B customers are doing their initial research on their own (Google)

Before a customer picks up the phone to call your business, they’re already multiple steps further along the sales cycle. Understanding SEO will help you get more qualified leads so by the time a customer calls you they will already know what they want from you and how you can help them.

Employees and customers are beginning to be younger

Businesses need to adapt their communications strategies to cross all forms of technology to connect with their employees and multigenerational buyers (MHEDA Journal). Ditch the outdated and hard-to-use business software for an up-to-date and fully integrated CRM system to help combat multigenerational differences and track where your leads are coming from.

Believe it or not, the majority of manufacturing companies are still in the early stages of content marketing. Meaning there’s still time for you to rank higher on Google and start capturing missed leads with the right marketing strategies and software to make it happen.

To learn more about these must-have marketing strategies we would like to invite you to the December 12 Vox ISM’s Exclusive Marketing webinar where Co-Founders of Waves Digital Canada will be guest speaking. For complete agenda and registration, click here. 

Blog post by Marie Scholz, Co-Founder, Waves Digital Canada.